Currently, a user, e.g. a private consumer or firm or other, may purchase and/or pay for an item (a physical or non-physical product or service) from a point-of-sale, said point-of-sale e.g. being a physical shop or an online shop or an account. The point-of-sale prints a physical receipt, and/or emails an electronic receipt and possible a warranty in the form of a pdf-document or similar, alternatively the receipt has to be downloaded from a website.
The user following has to balance the receipt against a credit account or debit account in order to ensure that the amount is correct and also to ensure that no other amounts have erroneously been withdrawn from the account. If the user further wants the amount to appear as an entry in a private accounting or in all links and parts of a firm's bookkeeping records, the amount and possible receipt and information about the purchased item need to be manually entered into the private accounting or bookkeeping records.
Further, the receipt and warranty need to be archived either physically or electronically. If the receipt and warranty has been received in electronic form from the point-of-sale, the electronic receipt and warranty may simply be stored electronically on a computer or server, e.g. in a dedicated folder. If the receipt has been printed, the receipt needs to be scanned or photographed and subsequently stored on the computer or server.
If the user wants to receive offers and/or advertisements from the point-of-sale, and/or the point-of-sale wants to send offers and/or advertisements to the user, it is possible to sign up for a newsletter or the like. However, it is not readily possible to receive targeted offers and/or advertisements from the point-of-sale directly following the purchase or the payment.
Overall, the many steps involved in balancing accounts, storing receipts etc. are very time consuming and tedious for a private consumer and even more so as regards cost for firms that have a very large number of purchases and where the purchased items need to be stored and categorised for accounting and tax purposes, not least when employees are using credit or debit cards to pay for travel tickets and car hire and fuel and restaurants and hotels and more. The employee needs to keep all the receipts, and then normally on a monthly basis he or she must account for the amounts spent by balancing the monthly statement against the kept receipts. The firm must then receive and handle and post and balance all transactions, and store all receipts.